18 posts categorized "Philanthropy"

April 07, 2008

The other day in London I spent some time with Richard Bernstein, the brilliant CEO of Eurovestech, a fund investing in tech startups in Europe.

But we didn't only discuss tech ideas and entreprises: we talked charity. Richard is the man behind an intriguing new form for making donations to non-profits. I first learned about it last December, when 100'000 shares of Eurovestech were donated to the small non-profit I co-founded, Friends of Humanity, in Geneva.

The principle is simple: instead of donating cash, Eurovestech -- which is publicly listed on the London stock exchange -- issues new company shares in batches of 100'000 and gives them to charitable organizations. They are then of course free to sell them immediately or hold on to them waiting for a higher valuation. From Eurovestech's point of view, it costs only a fraction of what it would have cost to give the same amount in cash. From the recipient's point of view, it's a significant amount of money with a potentially interesting additional upside, depending on the share's value evolution.

There is, of course, a "hidden" cost: dilution. Simplifying, it means that every time the number of shares of Eurovestech grows, all shares are worth a bit less. A tiny bit less, actually: 100'000 extra shares are almost negligible compared to the 344 million shares that comprise Eurovestech's capital. "I believe that a dilution of 0.2 % per annum is absolutely invisible: it's basically a rounding error", Richard told me.

Over the last 7 years, Richard's company has donated a total of 8.2 million ordinary shares to some 73 different charitable and non-profit organizations, amounting to a stock market value of roughly 1.9 million euros.And Eurovestech is just a small company. But Richard wants now to encourage other companies to do the same. He's done the maths: "If all the companies on the FTSE-100 gave 0.1% of their shares every year, that would amount to almost 1.8 billion euros", he says. "Now apply that to all the other listed companies".

He is a believer in corporate responsibility not as a marketing tool but as "an intrinsic duty to be a good citizen and do the right thing". Richard has already convinced other companies to follow suit -- one of which has already allocated 5 million euros worth of shares for charity. He is now in the process of setting up an organization, called Share And Share Alike, which will raise awareness of and promote this approach, centralize share donations, and distribute them. He hopes to be able to convince companies all over Europe to start donating shares. "I'm ready to go to see any CEO, in any company, anywhere in Europe to explain how it works and show how easily it can be done from the company's point of view", he said.

Legally, he says, for listed companies this is easily done. The Board can issue shares. The decision must be communicated to the markets and be filed according to regulations, but that's pretty much it. Although legally this is not necessary, some companies may chose to get shareholder approval at the annual meeting -- to make it into a shareholder-approved policy.

Richard: "I want to get to the point where it's embarrassing for a company not to be "sharing alike"...".

March 25, 2008

Says Janet Ginsburg: "A full year before the CDC reported cases of paralysis in West Nile patients, cases had been reported in veterinary journals in large mammals. Nevermind that humans are, in fact, large mammals, doctors don't have time to read veterinarian journals and vice-versa".

There are similar examples in just about every field, and that's why Ginsburg -- a former BusinessWeek science reporter with extensive experience in covering things like biosurveillance -- has been working with InSTEDD (see this previous post) to imagine a way to cross these silos of expertise and promote cross-disciplinary awareness and collaboration. "Though specialization has led to a greater aggregate knowledge, gaps between disciplines mean missed opportunities and potential dangers", she told me the other day. The answer: the Humanitarian Technology Review (HTR -- not the final name), an attempt to provide experts across a range of fields -- and across the world -- a place to learn about each other's work, and to connect.

What connects these fields? The HTR defines technology broadly: "anything and everything that can make a difference". One of the key points is that "disease and disaster are most often viewed as separate issues, and handled by different agencies and specialists". Yet, there is no humanitarian crisis without a health component, or a serious disease outbreak without a humanitarian dimension. Likewise, "most human diseases are zoonotic, meaning they also affect animals; animal and human health are two sides of the same coin. And regional disasters can quickly go global, while global events can have devastating local consequences".

These intersections are increasingly frequent and producing severe impacts. The HTR is an attempt to mix and match ideas and innovations that can lead to better answers. "Some of the most promising developments in the field over the last few years are the result of inspired combinations", is stated in the Review's project documents. For instance:

The core of the HTR will be an electronic newsletter and website, which will be complemented with videos, blogs, podcasts, downloadable software and tools, translation and mapping programs, etc (plus print and events) -- whatever platform can serve its mission.

Here is a PDF describing the project. Initiated by InSTEDD, the Review will be editorially independent. For more details and an account of the HTR's genesis, see this post on Ginsburg's blog.

March 29, 2007

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Third day/closing session (Website - SocialEdge)

Larry Brilliant, the director of Google.org, starts his talk by showing a short clip from a 1958 movie by Frank Capra, "The Unchained Goddess" -- a precursor of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" -- where a scientist, talking over images of melting Arctic icecaps and maps of rising sea levels inundating the southern regions of the US, explains:

"Even now, Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release through factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer!"

"So in 1958 we knew about global warming: should we feel good or bad that 50 years of foreknowledge accomplished so little?", Brilliant asks. He explores some megatrends:

increasing global warming: gravest effects on the poorest and most vulnerable

increasing population: +/- 50 percent in 50 years, from 6.5 billion today (we already "eat" resources as if we were 20 billion) to more than 9 billion

increasing urbanization: this years we past the tipping point, 50 percent fo population lives in cities

increasing - explosive - growth of technology, which is beneficiary but has downside in bioweapons, etc

increasing globalization, which has big winners and bigger losers. Today 1 percent of world population owns 40 percent of all goods and services (as Bill Clinton says, this situation is unprecedented, unequal, unfair and unstable)

Case for pessimism:

Water and other resources riots: 230 riots per day in China last year; Darfur is in fact a resource war; refugees crisis

These megatrends may lead to anger, religious and sectarian violence, terrorism; denial, materialism; and where does this lead social entrepreneurs? Even if CO2 emissions stopped today, global warming would continue and the next decades would see rises in sea levels of minimum of 20 to 30 inches. He looks -- "navigating" the region with the help of GoogleEarth -- at the case of Bangladesh: the combined impact of melting snows from the Himalaya and of rising sea levels could displace 100 million people in Bangladesh. We are all in this together, global warming is something that's happening to all of us, as are the newly emergent diseases. There have been several diseases that began in animals and have jumped species in the last 30 years.

Case for optimism:

humanity has always risen to meet the challenge, just look at the list of Nobel Prizes engaged in prevention of nuclear dissemination; the creation of Médecins sans Frontières, of GrameenBank, etc; we have seen the eradication of smallpox, we may see the eradication of polio and guinea worm soon.

there is a change in philanthropy and business practices, by younger wealthy people, and creating new models for philanthropy.

He tells his own story of traveling through Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan; living in a Himalayan monastery; and starting to work in India for WHO's smallpox program -- finally being instrumental in eradicating it. Smallpox was the worst disease in history. In the 20th century it killed 500 million people, 2 million people in 1967 only. Poor and rich people alike (the King Louis XV of France or the Tsar Peter II of Russia among others died of smallpox). (Read this previous post where Brilliant tells about how they succeeded in eradicating it).

"To think that smallpox no longer exists should make us proud, and make us optimistic in tackling global warming".

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Third day/1 (Website - SocialEdge)

Panel moderated by Alex Nicholls of the Saïd Business School.

Helmut Anheier, director of the UCLA Center for civil society, has led a wide-ranging research looking at hundreds of foundations to gain a better understanding of what innovation and creativity means for them. (The PDF is here; BG note: unfortunately they looked only at foundations in the Anglo-Saxon world: US, UK and Australia).The last significant innovation in this field, he says, happened 100 years ago with the creation of the modern American foundation. We went then from charity (filling gaps in government provision) to philanthropy (a more "scientific approach" to social problem-solving, attacking root causes). In the late part of the XX century, this evolved into strategic philanthropy, process-oriented, with evaluations and impact measurement, borrowing models from businesses; but this is not really a model of philanthropy, it just made it more efficient. What's next? Anheier suggests "creative philanthropy", the "unique capacity of foundations to spot innovative solutions to problems, to jump-start them and disseminate them". Foundations are the players most able do to this because of their unique signature: their endowment gives them independence (from market/shareholders, as well as from the electorate and the political elites). Foundations are among the most independent institutions of modern society. He gives a few examples of "creative philanthropy":

The Carnegie UK Trust with a limited budged (1.4 million GBP) has radically transformed the way in which ageing is seen in the UK and was a major factor in the creation of a government program entitled Better Government for Older People.

The Rowntree Charitable Trust has been a key player in achieving the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in the UK and, behind the scenes, in the peace talks in Northern ireland

In the US, the Rosenberg Foundation (San Francisco) over the last ten years achieved major reforms in the child support system in California.

He also mentions the Knight Foundation, which operates at the intersection of media, politics and society.

Characteristics of creative philanthropy:

it's not all about money: it's also about knowledge, trust

grant-making is only one tool among others

these foundations are knowledge-driven (foundations are great repositories of information)

foundations are in it for the long term, applying a systemic view

involves partners, networks

can take risks like no other institutions

regular review, diverse viewpoints

multiple strategies aimed at sustainability

"show and tell" and active dissemination of the ideas

Without arguing that all foundations should become "creative" and put their charitable or more conventional activities aside, what could be the future of foundations?

Foundations are entrepreneurs.

Foundations are institution builders, they cannot do it alone, even the richer foundations have to work with others, have to establish some form of coalition, networks, etc.

Foundations see themselves as risk-takers, but that's not exact: foundation also often can absorb the risks that others take.

Foundations are mediators, often appear to be the neutral partner in a project, a "honest broker"

Mark Kramer, the director of FSG Social Impact Advisors, believes that we are on the cusp of a generational divide. Social entrepreneurs today are struggling with the transition, but the next generation will not separate non-profit and for-profit sectors. In the future people won't see philanthropy as the primary means of solving social problems (which doesn't mean that philanthropy will disappear).

One: The current system is not working, he says. In the US the non-profit sector is phenomenal, almost 1 trillion USD a year, 7% of workforce. Yet every problem you look at is in the same or a worse state. It's not working in terms of the corporate sector either: think of how the auto industry in the US is self-destructing. It's not happening in terms of government: US spends more on education than almost anybody else but its students rank very low. After coasting for a long time, problems are becoming inescapable

Two: We see shifts in behavior in both sectors. In the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, he co-wrote an article suggesting that the social value proposition of a business is a key competitive advantage going forward. Businesses need to consider social issues not only in response to customer concerns, but because that's the only way to succeed. So companies are turning "green", looking seriously at the bottom of the pyramid, set social and environmental standards. There is a shift in the behavior of foundations too: defining clear goals, and taking responsibility for how things are evolving. And of course the rise in public-private partnerships.

Three: there is a big momentum in social investing. And people are beginning to accept the idea of a blended return, of trading some social return for a lower financial return.

Four: there is a flood of talent coming into the sector. Many people in the last decade have achieved great wealth quickly (dotcom milionnaires, for example) and many of them are looking for the next challenge. These are people that are very comfortable using for-profit tools to achieve social goals. And an increasing portion of graduates and MBAs are turning to the social sector.

Fifth: what makes high-net-worth donors highly effective? Studies show that most donors started out in philanthropy with skepticism, they didn't really think that philanthropy was going to make such a difference. Then, at some point, they came across an issue of great personal significance to them, and they decided to take action, and shifted from thinking about giving away money to thinking about how to solve the problem.

Lester Salamon, the director of the Center for civil society studies at Johns Hopkins University, also intervenes in this panel but the more he talks, the more he gets me restless: his figures are mostly pre-1997 (sprinkled with rare 2002 updates): that's pre-Gates Foundation (founded in 2000), pre-Omidyar Network (2004), pre-Skoll Foundation (1999), pre-dotcom wealth, pre-most of the players that are changing the rules, so I don't find what he says particularly significant.

***

John Elkington, founder of SustainAbility, moderates a panel with Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector (the non-profit, socially-driven) in the UK government, and Bill Drayton, the CEO of Ashoka, a global association of over 2000 social entrepreneurs.

Bill Drayton: "We used to have a small elite, now we need to get everyone involved in change-making, and figure out ways to think and work together building on our individual entrepreneurial spirit". "Government and universities are the last remaining pre-modern institutions; we need to help them make the transition".

Ed Miliband: "Beyond their direct impact, social enterprises are driving a big change in the private sector to take into account moral/ethical issues and make the marketplace more fair; in the public sector to pay more attention to their users in the delivery of their services; and have a huge potential to change politics itself by changing perceptions". "Government needs to recognize and spread the word about social enterprises; in Britain only one-fourth of people know what they are". "There are many structural injustices and breakdowns in society which cannot be solved without politics and government".

March 28, 2007

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Second day/4 (Website - SocialEdge)

The 2007 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship have been presented tonight to:

Vicky Colbert of the Foundation Escuela Nueva, which she created with rural Colombian teachers to foster education for underserved children through a more flexible approach and stronger school-community ties, developing it into a national, then international movement reaching 5 million pupils in various Latin American countries, Uganda, and the Philippines.

Craig and Mark Kielburger of Free The Children. They started it in their early teens as a classroom fundraiser and grew it to become an international organization with 1000 chapters in schools across the US and Canada fighting poverty, exploitation and powerlessness among children.

Sebastien Marot of Friends International, an initiative to take Cambodian kids off the streets and help them reintegrate society.

Susan Burns and Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network, developers of the Ecological Footprint, a tool that tracks the extent to which human demand on nature exceeds what the planet can regenerate. this measure, applied by countries, hundreds of cities and organizations across the world, as become a leading sustainability indicator. Their goal is to institutionalize it in at least 10 countries by 2015.

Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas, an organization helping develop the state of Orissa, one of the poorest Indian regions.

Roshaneh Zafar of the Kashf Foundation (Kashf means "miracle"), focusing on microfinance for women in Pakistan. Started in 1996, the Foundation made 228'000 loans in 2006, has 135'000 clients and a recovery rate of 99.9 percent.

Rupert Howes of the Marine Stewardship Council, focusing on reversing the decline in global fishing stocks through a marine certification and an eco-labeling program.

Dan Viederman of Verité, which works on improving working conditions around the world.

Dorothy Stoneman of YouthBuild USA, an alternative school where dropout youths re-enroll, complete high school, and at the same time work to build affordable housing for the homeless.

Here's how Sally Osberg, CEO of the Skoll Foundation, describes social entrepreneurs: "practical innovators who create sustainable engines at the grassroots level, a new kind of leaders who meld the discipline of business with the perspective of those less fortunate". The awardees each receive three-years grants of USD 1'015'000.

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Second day/3 (Website - SocialEdge)

Four people met/seen during the Forum, and the interesting things they are doing:

John van Duursen is a young Dutch who is trying to "bring to the surface the potential business opportunities that exists in developing countries". He is doing so through his foundation "Business in Development" which he created with a colleague less than three years ago. They receive business proposals from all over the world (over 2000 last year), gets them screened three times each by specialists (from KPMG, ING, energy companies, etc -- they all work pro bono), attributes to the best ones a coach or mentor to strengthen the plan, and then funds them or helps them get funded. "These are the business ideas that need between 5'000 and 500'000 euros in funding, and have difficulties in finding it because they fall between microfinance and venture capital -- we operate in the missing "middle finance". The average investment (8% of all received plans are "workable", 30 got financed last year) is of 100'000 euros. Among the ideas that land on John's desk: somebody training rats to detect mines, or to detect tuberculosis, in Tanzania; recycling of the waste of the slums to make fashion purses and wallets called "ragbags" in India; ecotourism in Indonesia; or "really crazy ideas" to fight rape in Africa.

Indian entrepreneur Ashok Khosla is one of the world's leading experts on sustainability, founder of Development Alternatives in Dehli, who creates and promotes commercially viable, environmentally friendly materials and technologies -- from construction materials to decentralized energy systems to water management (filtering, rural dams etc). He told me how he practices "revenue optimization" rather than "revenue maximization", which is the staple of most Western investors and venture capitalists. "I told one of them that roofing tiles is my most profitable product, and they told me: abandon the rest and focus on roof tiles. What they don't understand is that in order to sell the tiles I also have to sell the bricks to build the wall, and the tools, and possibly even train the people to build them".

Mechai Viravaidya is "Mr Condom" in Thailand (website). "Two decades ago there was an unmet need: women wanted the pill, but only doctors could give prescriptions, and there weren't that many doctors in Thailand, and they were mostly men. And why do you need a doctor to prescribe the pill? People who need family planning are not sick, they're horny". So they convinced government to relax the rules, let nurses and midwives give the pill, got birth rates under control. Also developed creative campaigns and initiatives about family planning, training for example rural teachers to spread information to kids, and to parents, using games and other tricks, or attracting media attention by organizing a "national condom blowing challenge" or a "condom usage competition" (as a balloon, as a headband). "The public got more and more used to it, and was not disgusted by condoms. Condoms are not dirty if your heart is clean".

Mel Young is the president of the Homeless World Cup. The next will take place in 2008 (4 have already been held, Russia won last year) and will bring together teams from 64 countries. The idea came out of a conference on homelessness where no homeless was invited to attend -- and gathering them through football was a way to bypass both the motivation and the language barriers, "football is an international language" says Young. Nike is a sponsor. Enthusiasm is high, kids ask the homeless players for autographs, "the transformation is astonishing, in terms of self-confidence. Their lives absolutely change", 12 players went on to become professionals.

Edward Skloot, president of the New York-based Surdna Foundation: social entrepreneurship "has less to do with making money and more with finding new ways of solving problems". "There is no necessary connection between social entreprises and social capital".

Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, invests in for-profit and non-profit companies that work on ways to accelerate delivery of water, healthcare etc in developing countries. "This field is hurtling itself forward towards the future of capitalism". "One of the risks of social entrepreneurship is that we idealize the social entrepreneur as a hero. And while they indeed are, no one can build their businesses without a team". "The first thing we do: find entrepreneurs that look at the poor as viable customers, and not as passive recipients of charity". "We then look for entrepreneurs who understand that there is a spectrum in capital. It doesn't make sense anymore to separate 'investment money' and 'philanthropic money': philanthropic money is a higher-level kind of risk capital". "There is a yearning in young people around the world to use their skill-set and find ways to bring business skills to bear in solving really though and complex social issues". "It makes me nervous that none of us comes from government, because at the end of the day we need to find ways to inflect policies". "The only way to design an effective product for poor people is to listen to them, and the best way to listen to them is to find out what price they would pay for it". (Watch Jacqueline's speech on TEDtalks)

JB Schramm, founder of the College Summit, who supports low-income high-school students and help schools build "college culture" among their students: "in the US, the
most cost-effective way of breaking the cycle of poverty is to get a
person who would be the first in his/her family to go to college to go
through college" (see this article from FastCompany).

March 27, 2007

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Opening session/1. (Website - SocialEdge)

This year's Skoll Forum on Social Entrepreneurship (the fourth) goes under the theme "Enabling innovation". About 700 attendees, and a wide range of panels and speeches covering the many facets of social innovation -- from "where do ideas come from" to financing them and scaling them up, from working at the grassroots level to partnering with businesses, from "design thinking" to a systemic approach to innovation. I will try to blog a few of them.

Starting with the opening ceremony, which takes place in the round, historic (XVII century) and uncomfortable shapes of the Sheldonian Theatre and features statements and speeches by Stephan Chambers of the Saïd Business School at Oxford (which hosts the Skoll Center devoted to social entrepreneurship); Jeff Skoll, founder of the Skoll Foundation and of Participant Productions (his money comes from having co-founded eBay); John Hood, vice-chancellor of Oxford University; Geoff Mulgan and Rushanara Ali, director and associate director of the Young Foundation; writer Charles Handy; economist David Galenson of the University of Chicago (see next post for a summary of his speech); 2006 Nobel laureate for Peace Muhammad Yunus interviewed by broadcaster Pat Mitchell, and HM Queen Rania of Jordan -- plus music by Salman Ahmad, the founder of Junoon (which means "passion"), one of South Asia's most popular rock bands.

Introducing the event, Chambers quotes the poet Wadsworth who wrote: great writers create the taste by which they are to be understood. In the same way, he says, "entrepreneurs create the conditions by which they become understood". According to Jeff Skoll (see this post about his recent speech at TED2007), social entrepreneurs are creating those conditions: "In 2006, social entrepreneurs went from the edges of society to the mainstream" -- helped in that by the 2006 Nobel Prize given to Yunus. "The nature of philanthropy is shifting, and the nature of change is shifting too", from organizations to individuals, from governments to people. "Social entrepreneurs are everywhere social problems call for innovation, inspiration, and an inability to take failure as an option, and replacing cynicism with hope, and altering the course of history". John Hood stresses that "the growth in social entrepreneurship in both theory and practice has been remarkable in the last 10 years, which brings challenges -- including the challenge of focus".

A decade ago, a British think-tank that Geoff Mulgan used to run, called Demos, published a book called "The rise of the social entrepreneur". Ten years on, he says, "thanks to Yunus' GrameenBank, Ashoka and many others, social entrepreneurship has indeed entered mainstream". Social innovations have been many (fair trade, microcredit, complementary medicine, zero carbon housing scheme, carbon credits, timebanks, pledgebanks, patient-led healthcare, etc). "How do we take this further?" he asks. And mentions the three lessons, or organizing principles, taught by the late Michael Young, an archetypal social entrepreneur (after whom the Young Foundation is named):

we should always take "no" as a question, not as an answer.

look for small changes with potentially big leverage.

when you see a problem, act on it.

Rushanara Ali offers three examples of social innovation by the Young Foundation, "starting with modest ambitions but combining the passion, energy and insights of local areas and building up over time":

The Open University, the world's first successful distance teaching university, created in 1969 in response to exclusion from higher education (particulary for women), copied around the world by public and private sector. Like many innovations, OU faced a lot of resistance, particularly from universities (including from Oxford).

Tower Hamlets Summer University, created in 1995 in the east-end of London (home of the largest Bangladeshi community in the UK), set up as a response to young people having nothing to do and getting into troubles: a program to keep them occupied, raise their aspirations, channel their energy into creative activities; the project helped reducing crime and drug abuse, and is now being rolled out across London and the UK.

Language Line: telephone interpreting service for hospitals, police and other public services for the (culturally very diverse) London region. Now provides over 100 languages. Initial model was very straightforward, using immigrants as call centre operators. Most resistance initially from surgeons and doctors. Later sold off as a business, with professional intepreters, currently serving 750'000 people, and very much integral to the UK health system.

Mulgan: too many of the world's problems (climate change, aging, poverty, rapid urbanization, etc) are getting worse. What can be done to accelerate social innovation? Why doesn't social innovation attract the same billions as tech innovation? "The starting point has to be the passion to achieve change, but that's not enough. We have looked in some details at the processes of change, at the relations between the bees (the individuals with ideas) and the trees (the organizations, governments, businesses etc which have the capacity): without the alliance between the two, change doesn't happen", although "this movement of outsiders (the social entrepreneurs) should be careful not to become too much a movement of insiders". He mentions a couple of projects supported by the Young Foundation, such as Neighborhood Fix-It (a website using Google Maps that allows citizens who see something wrong locally to click and flag it; a message gets sent to the local officials and a conversation gets started) and the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX, a network of networks, resources and ideas for social innovation).

British writer and social philosopher Charles Handy has recently published with his wife Elizabeth a book called "The new philanthropists", where 23 people are portrayed. "Stories of ordinary people doing interesting things, and of the issues they raise", he says. He briefly tells four:

Jeff Gambin, a Tibetan/Australian who owned a small chain of restaurants and a Rolls Royce when -- in his 40s, about ten years ago -- he had an epiphany about the lives of homeless in Sidney, sold the restaurants, and started preparing food for them, 400 a night. He was funding this out of his own money, but he is a businessman, and he wanted not only to feed people but also to teach them how to feed themselves. Has set up computer training centers to train them. Handy say that Campbell has taken 6000 people off the streets in 10 years.

Tony Adams is not a businessman. He was a famous footballer in the UK, captain of the Arsenal team, a hero to many young boys. But he was also a drunk, and went to prison at the height of his career for drunk driving. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, wrote a book, retired from football at 32, started a clinic for people with alcool problems and does prevention work.

Peter Ryan, an ordinary (meaning: non rich) executive in a French food business, inspired while traveling in Asia, started a microloan operation in Malawi with about 20'000 pounds, giving hundreds of small loans over the last 3 years, mostly to women, mostly paid back.

Mo Ibrahim is the man who brought the first handheld mobile phone into Britain, and created telecom companies in Sub-Saharian Africa. He has set up a hospital for breast-cancer patients in Karthoum, Sudan. Along it, he rents out luxury offices, the income of which, he hopes, will fund the hospital. Last year, he announced a prize to the African democratically elected ruler who can demonstrate that under his or her leadership the country has seriously improved (he has set a series of criteria) and who commits to leave public office, he will give a prize of 5 million dollars and a lifelong income of 200'000 USD per year.

What's new about these "new philanthropists", asks Handy?

they're young-ish, in their 40s. They're still full of energy and ambition, but of a different ambition: to achieve social change. And want to do it now.

they are not investing in buildings, in local universities, or museums, but they are ttacking what they perceive as social needs.

they are DIY (do-it-yourself) freaks. They are not prepared to write checks to institutions they don't know or to people they've never met.

On the other hand, he adds, they desperately understand that nothing works by itself, that they need help, teams make a difference; and that they are often not very popular when they enter areas where they don't know anything (NGOs often react by saying: "why don't they just give us the money, we know how to do this"). Increasingly the available money for innovation and social change is going to be in the money of individuals and not governments or organizations. These people are the seeds of change. Yes we read the stories of greed and duplicity in boardrooms today. "But something new is happening. Adam Smith wrote two books. In the first he said that self-interest drives the world and keeps it going. But in the second he added that it's sympathy and moral sense that keeps it together. We have so far assumed that it was the job of business to create the world and keep it going, and that the sympathy/moral part was the job of governments. Increasingly however we are realizing that governments can't do everything. There are signs that self-interest and sympathy are coming closer together. Wouldn't it be nice if every business had a social venture fund, or participated in one? Wouldn't it be nice if one day businesses saw themselves as social entreprises?"

GrameenBank founder and Nobel prize Muhammad Yunusis interviewed by Pat Mitchell who introduces him by summarizing the story of how GrameenBank was started. "A young economic professor at the university of Chittagong observes that in this part of Bangladesh the poor have only one option when they need money: horrendous interest rates from lenders. Banks won't lend to the poor without collateral. Cultural taboos discourage lending to women. He lends 27 dollars of his own money, mostly women, they pay it back, loans more, etc. Goes on to open a new kind of bank. The Grameen model is exported around the world -- and last year he got the Nobel Peace prize". (BG note: it must be said here that the interest rates asked by Grameen, in the two digits, are also controversial).

Yunus: Today in Bangladesh we reach 80% of all poor families with microcredit, and of course we want to reach 100%. But as you do, you wonder what this does to people. One area we focused on was education for the children of our borrowers, was making sure that they go to school even though their parents are illiterate. Then we discovered that some of the children coming from illiterate families were top of their class, so we introduced scholarships. Grameen now gives out about 4000 scholarships a year. We then introduced education loans so that they could continue into higher education. We have been creating a new generation, dramatically different from their parents. What will they do once they finish their education? We invite them not to seek jobs, but to create jobs. The other lesson that we learned is that people taking a small loan don't only buy a cow or start a small business. They are also owning assets for the first time. And at the same time they are co-owners of the bank, this huge operation with 24'000 staff. They take a lot of pride. We introduced pension funds -- first time that people hear about pensions in Bangladesh, for them this is an amazing concept. At the beginning of Grameen the women were reluctant, but now there is alot of agility in the system, people understand loans, pensions, scholarships. This demonstrates that poverty is artificial, it's not inherent but it's imposed on people. Poverty is caused by the institutions, like the banks which neglect and ignore two thirds of people in the world who are not eligible to get a loan from a traditional bank. Poverty is also caused by the concepts we use, by the way business is defined, "to make money", that's the only kind of business admitted by economics. This unidimensional approach is a shame to the human beings. We need to do them justice. We should create other kinds of businesses to do good to people. That could change the whole structure of the economy. Economics assumes that we are selfish, but in truth we are not: it's just that the selfish part in us is the only one that's currently allowed. I met the CEO of Danone, the French food producer, and suggested that we create a Danone-Grameen company to produce yogurt in Bangladesh, and I told him that this is a business that won't distribute dividends, and he said OK: I thought he hadn't understood my English... And now we are producing yogurt. Things can be done differently, can be designed differently.

The closing speaker his HM Queen Rania of Jordan, who delivers a heartfelt call for understanding, for crafting together solutions for problems that have been around for too long. She said: until recently, companies (focusing on the bottom line) and civil society organizations (criticizing the companies for their lack of social and environmental thinking) were antagonist. But now they seem to be joining forces into what the Harvard Business Review recently called a "new social compact", realizing that they not only can, but should collaborate, speak a common language. Companies are realizing that they are a part of society and not apart from it. But our postglobal society is not prospering, we live in poverty of multicultural knowledge and respect. The Western world and the Islamic world are in suspicion and fear, each side feels increasingly threatened and misunderstood by the other. Yet, East and West are neighbors. Social inequality is wrong, but so is social intolerance. We should build a shared commitment to multicultural responsibility, we all have a role in promoting it. And corporations have a key role to play in bridging this divide, they should engage in Corporate Multicultural Responsibility (CMR). CMR is more than an formula, it is an essential strategy for success. As we grow global, so does our responsibility. I have engaged myself in creating this trust and respect between East and West, but I'm still at base camp and the way is long and steep. I need your help.

TEDster Eric Kuhne, owner of CivicArts in London, a design and architecture firm involved in major projects around the world, describes a project for a "City of Silk" in Kuwait -- a new city that would house 700'000 people and including a 1001 meters tower. Another TEDster, Steve Nelson of ClearInk, shows the TED venue that was recreated in the synthetic world SecondLife (if you're a secondlifer, here is the SLURL).

Katherine Fulton, president of the strategy consultancy Monitor Institute, talks about "the new philanthropy". Philanthropy is being taken over by a new spirit of creativity and passion. The current philanthropic system is fragmented, frustrating for givers and recipients alike, and no longer attuned to the challenges of the present time. Philanthropy needs to become open, big, fast, connected and geared for the long term.This is a moment in history when the average person has more power than ever. Five categories of experiences that challenge the traditional assumptions of philanthropy.

Aggregate giving (Warren Buffet giving his money to the Gates Foundation instead of going the traditional way that every giver should have his/her own foundation: see this previous post on the "first global philanthropic superpower")

Innovation competitions (X-Prize;Earth Challenge: betting that a contest can attract talent and money to some of the most difficult challenges, and speed up the solution)

Social investing (Xigi.net: tackles the artificial separation between business and philanthropy)

There are other categories (starting with the Clinton Global Initiative and the TEDprize). Not only philanthropy is reorganizing itself, but also other sectors: business is reorganizing itself. There is a new moral hunger that is growing. We don't have the words to describe this development. "Philanthrocapitalism", "venture philanthropy", "blended value", "natural capitalism", etc are the concepts flying around. She suggests "social singularity", borrowed from the idea of technological singularity where a number of trends follow a path of exponential growth and converge. It may be that social singularity may be something that we fear -- epidemics and migrations and climate change etc all coming together. Because our ability to confront the problems that we face has not kept pace with our ability to create them. Is there a positive, desirable social singularity? Yes, there are seeds of it all around us. What if the philanthropic innovations can combine with each other (and other forces of good) to become catalytic and create lasting breakthroughs to respond to challenges? What if we could really do big and bigger things for love? (She refers here to a quote by Clay Shirky that goes something like this: we used to do small things for love and big things for money; now we are at a time when big things are also done for love).

After a comedic interlude by Rives and Ben Dunlap's storytelling performance (he's the president of Wofford College in South Carolina), the indescribably funny Tom Rielly is tasked (like every year at TED) with the closing wrap-up satire. With his deadpan style, using props and wordplays, Tom leads the audience back through the week and across a half-hour of pure, unadulterated, happy laughter:

Standing ovation. TED2007's over. TED2008 will take place February 28 - March 1 in Monterey.

TEDster Nick Sears from NYU shows a contraption that simulates 70'000 LEDs using only 64. Interesting potential for volumetric displays.

JJ Abrams is the inventor of "Lost" and "Alias", two of the most successful TV series of the last few years. Why do mysteries attract us so much? He pulls out a cardboard box, a "magic mystery box" that he bought when he was a kid with his grandfather in the Tannen mystery store in New York, for 15 dollars, and has kept it and never opened it. I've been wondering why I never opened it, he says, and realized that it represents potential, hope, infinite possibility. It represents the difference between what you think you're getting and what you really get. (He does not open it). In everything I do, I am drawn by infinite possibilities. Mystery is more important that knowledge. My Apple laptop challenges me. He tells me: what are you gonna write that will be worthy of me? The blank page is a magic box. He shows a clip from the pilot episode of "Lost" (the moments after the plane crashes in the island) which was done in 12 weeks, with the help of technology, and discusses the fact that creation is easier today not only for professionals but for everyone.

TEDster Jakob Trollback, CEO of Trollback & Co in New York, a branding and design studio, shows a visualization of a Brian Eno/David Byrne song dealing with rising waters (Noah's Ark) and religion, while Tim Sarnoff of Sony Imageworks (the company that did the special effects for the "Spiderman" movie) gives a preview of their latest animation comedy, "Surf's Up", with animal characters engaged in competitive surfing, which will be released in June, and explains how they created parts of it.

Dotcom executive becomes billionaire, goes to Hollywood to make movies and, surprise, the movies don't suck. That's Jeff Skoll, who was one of the founders (and first fulltime employee) of eBay, and went on to take his money and found
Participant Productions (which co-produced movies such as "Good Night,
and Good Luck", "Fast food nation" and "An Inconvenient Truth" - read
this post to see how they decide what projects to support). What drives me, he says, is a vision of the future that we probably all share, a world of prosperity and sustainability. And I think that we realize how far we have to go to get to that phase of humanity -- "humanity 2.0". Two big calamities in the world today: the gap in opportunities, and the hope gap. There is this weird idea that an ordinary individual could not make a difference in the world, but within each of us there is the potential to fill these gaps. He tells of launching eBay and going "from living in a house with 5 guys in Palo Alto and living off their leftovers, to have serious money". He says of asking John Gardner on how best to use this fortune and getting as an answer: "Bet on good people doing good things". So he started the Skoll Foundation to support social entrepreneurs. Participant Productions came out of the idea of using storytelling for the public interest. In 2003 I started to go around Hollywood to talk about a "social media company". I was told over and over that the streets of Hollywood being paved with people like me. But PP started with the idea of not only doing movies but also getting involved in the issues (there are activism and advocacy programs that accompany the movies online). "North Country", with Charlize Theron, about harassment, may have played a role in the renewal of the US "Violence against women" Act. About Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth", he says they decided to do it immediately after having seen Gore's slideshow about climate change, but that they thought it would be a documentary destined to niche television channels -- instead, it got an Oscar and is changing the debate on climate change.At PP they're now preparing two movies about Afghanistan (one about Charles Wilson, a US politician who supported the Taliban to fight against the Soviets; the other from the "Kite Runner" bestselling book). He closes by dreaming up some headlines for 2010 or 2015: "US imports its last barrel of oil", "Snows return to Kilimanjaro", "Israeli and Palestinians celebrate anniversary of peace", and a screenshot from eBay: "Well-traveled obsolete slideshow for sale" -- that's Al Gore's, of course.

TEDster Paul Koontz, a VC, shows pictures of his trip to North Korea, a world of absurdity. One image shows a multiple-time-zones clock with only two time zones: Pyongyang and Havana. Another a policewoman directing the traffic in the middle of a giant crossing -- but there are no cars. He shows a short video from the "Mass Games" that are performed in the stadium, involving tens of thousands of performers organizing massive mosaics by turning colored pages of books and holding them up to compose giant images (like the one showing the soldier and the "dear leaders" in the backdrop in the picture at right -- which is not from Paul's presentation, but was taken by Reinhard Krause). The perfection of the extravagant performance as seen in Paul's video is amazing, so maybe he's right in comparing it to "a giant communist display" where "every performer is basically a pixel". (You don't want to be the broken pixel).

Deborah Scranton is the filmmaker of "The War Tapes": she gave cameras to US infantry soldiers in Iraq in 2004 asking them to film their war life, and basically directed the movie via e-mail and instant messaging -- a unique collaborative film (see the trailer). She calls the approach "virtual embed": a novel way to tell a story in video from the inside out, rather than
observing from the outside in, as in traditional documentary-making. She shows scenes from the movie, and tells the backstory. One of the most profound stories: A soldier came up to me and he looked at me and I smiled and I saw the tear starting hi his eye and he told me about killing a child who got too close to the vehicle and was run over, "I'm a father, and I'm afraid to tell my wife because she may think that I'm a monster". She sees this as exhibit A in a disconnect between the lives of soldiers and those of the other Americans.Scranton is now using a similar approach to tell the story of the US-Mexico border, putting cameras into the hands of the border patrol, ranchers, humanitarians who leave water in the desert trying to save lives, smugglers, and illegal immigrants themselves. David Pogue, the NY Times' tech columnist revealed last year his talents as a comedian - watch video or read summary - is offered a mini-slot of three minutes that he uses to play a "history of technology" using a portable keyboard, mixing up the iPod, YouTube, music downloads, and more. Funny.

Game designer Will Wright created "Sim City" and "The Sims" -- probably the best-selling computer game of all time (Chris Anderson says in introducing him that "The Sims" has probably occupied 7 billion hours of cumulated world's attention). He comes on stage with a broken arm in a cast, and talks about his new project, "Spore", a game that simulates the
complete history and future of an alternative universe populated by
fantastic creatures (like the one in the picture at left). He explains it as a multigenerational game, where at every level players can "create" part of the game following the evolution of the creatures, and heavily inflect the dynamics of the overall environment. So the process of playing the game is the process of building up a big database of user-generated content. "It will be an amplifier for the user's creativity", he says. The demo he shows is that of a game with depth and almost infinite possibilities indeed. "I would like to give people some better calibration in long-term thinking. Maybe giving kids toys like this that let them observe long-term dynamics over a short period is a way in which games can change the world". Possible release date for "Spore": next September.